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Indonesian Antiterror Victories

This weekend’s raids were a win.

Updated Aug. 10, 2009 2:46 p.m. ET

It looks like Indonesian police just missed catching Southeast Asia’s most wanted terror suspect over the weekend. But the operation to hunt down Noordin Mohamed Top and the related defusing of a bomb plot aimed at President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono still speak well of that country’s counterterror efforts.

Indonesia’s elite counterterrorism force, Detachment 88, has been hunting Noordin since the 2002 Bali bombings. The Malaysian-born terrorist is the head of a small splinter faction of al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiya and...